


Knucklebones

by ByCandlelight



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, M/M, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 19:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14291496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ByCandlelight/pseuds/ByCandlelight
Summary: Erik stays. And somehow everything’s worse.





	Knucklebones

**Author's Note:**

> Edited by [subwaywall](http://archiveofourown.org/users/subwaywall/pseuds/subwaywall). Thanks ever so much!
> 
> This is my first X-men fic  
> ...it's only been 7 years since X-men: First Class

For a brief moment, the missiles hung suspended in the sky, and then, inexorably, they turned on their makers.

 

And then crashed into the sea.

 

Charles Xavier pressed two fingers to his temples. Erik Lehnsherr’s body was held immobile, but cold fury burned in his eyes, and all of his power reached to the helmet, upturned by Shaw’s corpse.

 

Charles let him go. The helmet shook itself loose and flew to Erik’s hands, and he placed it gently on his head. Charles flinched, but Erik wasn’t looking at him. He had turned to Azazel, Angel, and Riptide, who had clustered together, looking wary. 

 

Erik addressed them, “If you teleport us back, we’ll give you sanctuary. Shaw’s dead. You’ll need allies.”

 

For a few moments, they discussed among themselves, and then agreed. They all stood in a rough semicircle, hands joined, Moira at the end on Charles’ left, Angel at the other end. The world faded out, and when it reappeared, they were at the mansion in Westchester New York.

 

There was an instant when the world faded in and out when Charles and Erik’s eyes met.

 

When Charles had first dived into Erik’s mind it had been more bracing than the frigid ocean waters. Charles could still see the sea in Erik’s eyes. It held no warmth. 

 

It was supposed to be over, once Shaw had died. Then it just be Erik and Charles and their students and all the time in the world to file down the rough and broken edges of Erik’s soul.

It was all over.

 

***

 

Charles had thought that Erik would leave, but he stayed and that was somehow worse. He stayed and he helped Sean and Angel and Alex control their powers and he spent long hours talking to Hank and never once did he take off his helmet and never once did he acknowledge Charles.

 

Charles needed to get out, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t abandon the students, and it was too soon for a recruitment drive for the school. Things needed to die down first after Cuba. At least that was what Charles kept telling himself. When he was alone at night, he let the quiet voice speak to him, and ask, could he really do this, without Erik? Did he even want to?

 

So Charles kept doing as Charles did. He helped the students with their powers, and pretended that Erik had not somehow arranged their schedules so they rarely crossed paths. 

 

He talked to Hank about his research--Hank who was still blue and planning to remain so, thanks to Erik’s interventions. However, Hank like any good scientist, could not let an unexplained phenomena rest, had delved into trying to find why the serum had effected that change in the first place. 

 

Hank was so eager, hypothesizing about the different effects on different mutations, the effects this would have on non-mutants that Charles hardly had the heart to ask how this would be useful. Hank always lost sight of the broader picture when he got caught up in the excitement of science. But this time, Charles let it be. Hank had accepted himself, and that was enough for now.

 

It took a day after Shaw and the missiles for Charles to notice that his sister was avoiding him. He finally cornered her in the kitchen. She was making hot chocolate. 

 

If she was not cross with him, she would have offered him some. She did not. Ergo, she was cross with him, which Charles had presumed from the fact that she had exited the room with some poorly delivered excuse twice that day once he had shown up.

 

He looked into her yellow eyes and said nothing. She looked back steadily, and for a minute, he thought she would leave again, but she just sighed and looked away.

 

“You shouldn’t have done that, Charles,” she sounded sad and chiding, like an older sister.

 

He could have played dumb, but he had never been a very good actor. He knew what she meant: “He was going to kill them, Raven.”

 

“Yes, he was.” Her eyes were sharp and her voice was a hiss, “And maybe he should have. They were going to kill us. He was defending us. It was his choice. Not yours. Just because you can make our choices for us, doesn’t give you the right.”

 

And why should he make our choices? Charles wanted to ask, but he didn’t. His mind overflowed with all the words he didn’t say. Of how, in all this talk of accepting yourself, and Mutant and Proud, his mutation was conspicuously absent. No one thought he should parade his mutation around the kitchen.

 

But he didn’t say that, because he wasn’t a child anymore, whining about how the world wasn’t fair. He knew his mutation was not like the others. Erik’s and Raven’s were beautiful and awe-striking. His was awesome, invasive, and terrifying. He had known what he had been doing when he wrested control of Erik’s mind. He had weighed his love against the many lives.

 

He wished that now, the decision still seemed as easy as it had then.

 

Realizing he had no reply, Raven broke the silence, “I suppose Erik is mad enough at you for the both of us,” and there was warmth in her eyes again.

 

But Charles knew, if there was a second helmet, Raven would not hesitate to don it.

 

He stayed out of all of their heads after that.

 

More people lived in his house than he could ever remember. He had never felt so alone.

 

***

  
  


When Erik finally talked to him again, Charles almost wished he had kept the silence. Because now, the pieces finally fell into place.

 

His telepathy had made him complacent, and when he couldn’t--or wouldn’t--use it, he missed normal human cues. 

 

Like how half the time he went to check on Hank in his lab, Erik was there.

 

“--and we found a way to replicate the effects of the serum with a magnetic field. With you and Erik and cerebro--there would be no more persecution. We’d all be mutants--” Hank kept babbling with excitement, but Charles wasn’t listening.

 

For the first time in a year, Erik looked at him with something other than hatred in his eyes.

 

Charles felt sick. He fled like the coward he was.

 

***

  
  


It was too early for them to have this argument. Charles didn’t want it, didn’t want to see the stranger who had come to live within the eyes of his one-time lover.

 

“Isn’t this what you wanted Charles?” Erik’s tone held a sneer while his face remained stoic, “To end this without war, for the bloodless ascension of homo superior?”

 

Charles hid his face behind his mug of coffee, taking a long sip and twitching involuntarily as it burned his mouth. 

 

“I won’t be a part of this, Erik,” he replied at long last. “What I propose is evolution, a natural process, inevitable even. This…they never asked for this.”

 

“We never asked for the persecution. And anyways, you can’t stop us. Hank agrees with me.”

 

What an irony that was. Finally convincing the mutant to accept himself had created his own opposition. After all, it was Hank’s research that had led to this, made this possible. Even so, this was a bluff that Charles was going to call.

 

“You know you need me. I’ve seen Hank’s calculations. I’m the only one who can provide the psychic boost you need.” Unless they’d found Emma, but she had long been in the wind. And even then, she would never work with Erik. Would she?

 

“You’re wrong, Charles.” Erik’s gaze was steel, “You’re the only one who can provide the psychic energy and survive. One man is a small price to pay for the future of the species, wouldn’t you say?”

 

“You wouldn’t,” Charles breathed.

 

“Watch me.” And then Erik stalked out of the kitchen, the appliances rattling in aftershock.

 

***

 

It was Moira who made Charles realize that Erik was deadly serious.

 

She had stayed at the mansion after Cuba. The CIA had informed her that it was best if it appeared that she never had any sort of government association, and so she had retired to the mansion ostensibly to work on that novel she always planned on writing.

 

Everyone knew, of course, that she was still giving monthly updates, but she understood discretion and was hardly under the government’s thumb. Even Erik tolerated her presence, in the name of forestalling the government attempting a more invasive monitoring scheme. 

 

At least until Erik could amass enough support to start a war. Needless to say, he and Moira barely got along.

So when Moira told Charles her plan, he thought she had gone insane.

 

“They’re going to test this on everyone Charles, so if there’s something wrong, I’ll die anyways,” her voice brokered no argument.

 

“There’s no way they will actually go through with this,” but Charles couldn’t imbue his voice with much certainty.

 

“It’s Erik,” Moira replied flatly.

 

And really that said it all.

 

***

 

Charles was there when they tested the process on Moira. He didn’t need to be. For one person, Eric was plenty strong. 

 

But in the face of Moira’s bravery, he couldn’t allow himself that form of cowardice.

 

Eric was expressionless, or at least what expression he did have was masked by the helmet. Moira stood tall, but her eyes were fearful and wet, like a rabbit’s. 

 

It happened with little fanfare. Eric took her chin in his hand, and clenched his other fist, and Moira collapsed.

 

Hank caught her and lay her down, connecting monitoring equipment to watch her vitals. “She should wake up again soon,” Hank soothed, but he sounded less certain now than he had before.

 

***

 

Moira did wake up a few hours later, feeling fine. Determining whether or not the process worked, was of course another matter. And one that Erik and Hank had simply overlooked. 

 

In Erik’s case, extreme stress had caused his mutation to manifest. Hank had a physical mutation that has always been present. 

 

Physically, Moira was unchanged, so if she now had a mutation, it was something more subtle.

 

Thankfully, it only took a day for the change to become apparent. Otherwise, Charles seriously feared that Erik might have considered putting her under stressful situations to see what happened. 

 

Instead, Hank tried to draw blood and was thwarted by the needle bending. After it happened twice, it was pretty apparent what was going on.

 

Unbreakable skin. She could still bruise, but Moira nevertheless seemed pleased.

Erik was practically ecstatic. He wasn’t going to be satisfied with this achievement for long.

 

***

 

Of course, in the end, Charles couldn’t let him do it.

 

“Here to spectate, Charles?” Eric said, casually, as Charles stepped through the entrance to Cerebro. Hank continued to fuss with the various wires.

 

“No.”

 

For a long moment there was silence.

 

Then Charles spoke again, “I can’t let you do this, my friend,” and then added, before the anger could grow in Erik’s eyes, “I’ll help you.”

 

Erik nodded, and Charles searched his eyes to see if Erik had expected this all along, if this was a sacrifice that Erik never expected to need to go through with. There were no answers there, and Charles really wasn’t sure what was worse.

 

Erik eased the helmet off his head and beckoned with a gesture. Cautiously, Charles brushed against the surface of Erik’s mind and then sunk deeper, trying not to dwell on the thoughts there, trying not to pry.

 

He realized, suddenly, that Erik was at his mercy. He could stop this now. And Charles realized that Erik knew this too.

 

Charles took a shaky breath, and pushed that thought away.

 

“Let’s begin.”

 

***

The prototype Cerebro had extended his range to maybe a thousand miles, but this version let his mind circle the globe. He could feel all of them--over 3 billion--pulsing and alive. But for this, he would need to do more than sense their presence; he needed to be in their minds.

 

Gently--so incredibly gently, because at this level of amplification of his powers, a touch could spell brain damage--he slipped into their minds, ignoring the brightest ones--the mutants.

 

“I have them,” he announced breathlessly. 

 

“Good,” Hank was messing with the control panel, and didn’t look up. His hands were shaking with nerves, “All right. I just have to power up the auxiliary component that will allow us to channel Erik’s powers through you and into them all. It will be a few minutes. Sit tight.”

 

There were so many overlapping voices that they blended together into white noise. But now and again a snippet would filter through. Charles had never been able to resist the eternal intrigue of the human mind. That was the real reason he could never stay out of people’s heads.

 

He followed one of the fragmented thoughts to its source. The girl chattered to her mother, face lit up with something brighter than excitement. 6 years old. Anna. Her mother was driving her to get ice cream after school. It was a beautiful image, and Charles lingered.

 

Perhaps he should have known better. 

 

The image was shattered; Anna screamed, because “ _ Mommy--”,  _ the glee cut from her face and replaced with panic, and the truck didn’t stop _ , _  and Charles felt her mind crumble and recoiled from the pain--not consciously, but from instinct--and that’s when the 3 billion others shattered like glass under the force of his mind. 

 

Instinctively, Charles pushed Erik into unconsciousness--they were intertwined, but this way Charles could save him from what comes next--and then he sank beneath the wave of pain.

 

***

 

It wasn’t totally clear what had gone wrong. But Erik knew that something must have gone wrong, because the next thing he remembered he was flat on his back in Hank’s makeshift medical ward, and couldn’t for the life of him recall what had happened. Cerebro had started up, there had been a sudden influx of dizzying power, and then...nothing.

 

His attempt to sit up was rewarded with a spike of pain in his temples. Erik groaned audibly. In an instant, Hank was by his side.

 

“Did it work?” Erik rubbed his eyes, trying to force his vision to come into focus.

 

He was pretty sure that the drawn look on Hank’s face told him all he needed. 

 

Of course, once Hank did explain, it was even worse than Erik could have imagined.

 

“All of them?” It wasn’t really a question. Erik dug his nails into his palms and remembered bodies; a thousand lives extinguished with no purpose. But he wasn’t thinking of them, not really. 

 

He was remembering his mother.

 

***

 

Erik stared at Charles’s slack face and looked at him as he hadn’t in a long time. Had there always been those patches of gray in his hair?

 

The anger welled up, sharp and sudden and violent. His fist clenched almost against his will and the bed frame groaned under his poorly controlled emotion.

 

Hank took a nervous step towards him, and then paused, thinking better of it.

 

Breathing out through his nose, Erik forced his hand to relax. The bedframe settled, and his anger ebbed and dissolved into nothingness. Not nothingness--emptiness, and grief.

 

Because whether Charles woke or not, he was lost to him for good.

 

This was supposed to fix things for them. To forge a world of peace, a world in which they could be one. In that instant of mental unity, Erik had seen that future, had forgiven Charles’s trespasses. The sweetness of that moment lingered and turned bitter. 

 

At one point, Erik had thought that Charles could forgive anything. He had called it weakness. But Erik remembered those missiles, suspended in the air, remembered how Charles had betrayed his lover to spare his conscience. Above all else, this would not be forgiven. Charles would never forgive the one who made him a murderer

 

***

 

And though Charles did not wake, for everyone else, life went on. Well, for the mutants, at least. 

 

Erik hadn’t truly believed what Hank had told him, not at first. He went into town just once. No further proof was required.

 

But the mutants lived still--nearly 300,000 of them worldwide if Hank was correct--and they needed food and shelter and society. For the children--and most of the surviving were children--they needed parental figures and protection.

 

Hank and Azazel made it possible. With the coordinates of mutants from Cerebro, Hank to interpret them, and Azazel to travel to the locations, they were able to gather a number of the survivors to the mansion. Most were young, even the oldest was younger than Erik.

 

Not everyone needed their assistance, some of the surviving had already joined with other survivors. 

 

Some they couldn’t help. The coordinates they had focused mostly on North America, and even then, not everyone could be located. They did what they could.

 

Then there were longer term concerns--food, water, medicine, childcare, education. Hank had medical training, thankfully, and in terms of dealing with the children, Alex surprised everyone by stepping up.

 

He recruited other adults and teens to babysit and teach basic math and reading to the younger children, and convinced Hank to teach more in depth math and science to the older ones who were interested. When asked, Alex was reluctant, but mentioned something about how he had had a brother, once. Erik didn’t dare inquire further.

 

Food was what Erik was worried about. Sure, the bunker under the mansion was stocked--courtesy of Charles’ paranoid father--but it wasn’t designed to support the 26 people who resided there now--a number that continued to grow. He shared his concerns with Moira, who, despite their mutual distrust, had become something of a lieutenant to him, after leadership had fallen to him naturally in Charles’ absence. 

 

“We can go into town; there will be non-perishable goods at the grocers, and in homes. That will support us for a while until we can get some sort of agriculture going,” was Moira’s grim prognosis.

 

Erik knew it made the most sense. He had concluded that weeks ago. But that didn’t mean he wanted to face it--not again. But he could hardly foist that task on someone else.

 

“Alright,” he acquiesced. “Just the two of us, though. We’ll take the car, and there will be more space with just us.” 

 

The car was likely out of gas, or would be soon. They could siphon from other cars, if needed, but with Erik’s powers, it hardly mattered. 

 

After that particular trip, Erik retreated to his room, and it was many hours until he could once again emerge.

 

***

 

The issue of agriculture was resolved more easily than Erik could have dared to hope. Because, five weeks in, Jasper came to live at the mansion. Jasper, whose mutation let him grow plants from seed.

 

It took trips to various stores to find sufficient quantities of seed, and several hours of clearing out the greenhouses of the various decorative flowers that they had previously housed, and tearing up the turf of some of the vast lawns in order to grow some hardier crops outside, but then they were ready.

 

The only real difficulty came in convincing Jason. Because, apparently, despite his abilities, he really hated plants. Eventually, they came to some sort of agreement. Jason would (reluctantly) start the plants off, but others would tend to them on a daily basis. He could be a cook (because that, apparently, was his real passion) and only deal with the plants in case of emergency.

 

Finally, the plants were started off.

 

There were still more survivors coming in, now and again. Still the occasional tussle to be sorted out, people who couldn’t control their mutations, but overall things were stable, safe, at peace.

 

And the guilt still seemed to seep in Erik’s veins like poison. And Charles slept. Erik wondered if he would even want to wake.

 

***

 

Almost three months after the apocalypse of his own making, Charles disappeared. By the time anyone noticed, he had been gone for hours.

 

They had been monitoring his vital signs of course, and once disconnected they rung for hours. But Charles, apparently, had just prevented anyone from hearing them.

 

Erik took Azazel, and went after him.

 

The next time he was aware, he and Azazel both were sitting on a bench somewhere in the city that he did not recognize. Well, that wasn’t quite right. He knew exactly where he was, but it was a knowledge that was clearly foreign--clearly the work of Charles. That was so like Charles--not thinking twice about about taking over someone’s mind and erasing their memories, but still making sure they knew how to get back home.

 

They returned for the mansion to rest. The next morning, Erik departed once more, alone this time, and wearing his helmet. 

 

The thing about Charles, as powerful as he was, was that he was predictable. Able to redirect any unwanted visitors, there was little need for him to hide. At least, that was what Erik was hoping. He must have found Charles the day before, so he could do it again. Assuming Charles hadn’t decided to relocate to somewhere less obvious in the meantime. 

 

***

 

Even before he woke, Charles knew what he had done--in feelings, if not with the words to describe it. Perhaps that was why, each time his mind rose above the inky sea of unconsciousness, he forced his head back under, into the blackness.

 

But it could not last forever. Every time he pushed himself under, it was more difficult. His was not a mind made for prolonged slumber. And so one day, his grasp slipped, and awareness rushed in like a gasp of air. 

 

When he opened his eyes, she was standing there--the little girl whose name was Anna.

 

“I want Rainbow Sherbet,” she announced, and wrinkled her nose, and for a moment Charles thought he’d dreamed it all. But then she screamed, a single shrill note that cut off suddenly as she crumpled to the ground.

 

He closed his eyes to escape it, but she was behind his eyelids as well, and there were other voices now too, ringing in his ears.

 

It was many long minutes before he could sequester that corner of his consciousness, force behind walls of shields thick enough that he could think again. 

 

His shields were in tatters, his mind spread across the miles of his natural range. Normally, he would be overloaded by unbearable volume. 

 

Now, of course, it was quiet. He carefully pulled himself inwards, within the bounds of estate. There were more minds here than before. There was sadness in them, but also hope. They were rebuilding.

 

Someone was screaming again, and it was a moment before he realized that it was in his memories, and tamped it down again. And by the time he’d managed that, Anna was back, playing jacks on the floor. 

 

She met his gaze, “Mommy is gonna give me a baby brother.”

 

He couldn’t stay here.

 

***

 

Of course Erik found him, stubborn bastard. Then again, Columbia hadn’t been the most subtle hiding place--he’d always loved the campus. 

 

Others would be turned off by the bodies, but there weren’t so many here. It had been between terms, after all. Besides, it wasn’t like there was an escape from the ones in his head.

 

Living hurt, but he couldn’t make himself want to die. Maybe it was his ego; maybe it was cowardice.

 

***

 

When Erik found him again, Charles couldn’t send him away. He was wearing the helmet.

 

His lips cracked in the dry air, but he bit them anyways, teeth scraping nervously.

 

“What are you doing, Charles?” Erik’s voice had a softer quality than Charles had recalled. Was this what time had done to them then? Oh the irony. He heard himself in that voice--that child as Charles still recalled himself.

 

“Forgetting.” Trying to at least.

 

“Is it working?”

 

Charles searched his tone for any hint of condescension, but didn’t find any.

 

“No.” Despite the ease with which he manipulated the minds of those around him, his own resisted his conscious control. Every time he thought he’d eradicated them, the dead would appear in another corner of his mind, echoing overlapping pleas, and chatter, and cries. The outside world was quiet now; it was inside his head that he could no longer silence.

 

Erik seemed to be waiting for him to say something more.

 

“We hurt them Erik; we killed them.”

 

_ No. you did, Charles. _ But Erik didn’t say that. Maybe he wasn’t even thinking it. With the helmet, Charles couldn’t tell. Maybe Erik thought they were both to blame. Maybe Erik didn’t find any blame to attribute. Wasn’t this what he wanted? No more humans.

 

“They would have done the same to us; if they thought it would have made us … human,” but Erik’s tone gave him away. He was defensive.  _ guilty _ .

 

“We were supposed to be the better men,” Charles eyes were glistening, and his knees shook. He felt an incipient breakdown, now of all times.

 

Erik took a cautious step towards him. When Charles didn’t protest, he took several more, and wrapped his arms around him, supporting him.

 

This was the first time they’d touched, since Cuba. Charles felt nauseous. 

 

“It’s so quiet now,” Charles whispered.

 

And that was all it took for Erik to lift the helmet from his head, slowly at first, and then all at once. He sat cross-legged on the floor and set the thing next to him. 

 

“I don’t want to die, but I deserve it,” was Charles’s soft admission.

 

“You’re not going to die.”

 

“I know.”

 

They sat in silence for a while. Anna was playing patty-cake by herself, and kept begging him to join her. He tried not to look at her.

 

“I’m not going to be the same,” Charles said, apropos of nothing.

 

“Neither am I,” Erik didn’t seem phased.

 

“But wasn’t this what you wanted?” Charles asked, because he could be cruel when he chose to be.

 

“Not like this.”

 

Charles didn’t say anything for a long minute, and then, considering, said “funny what it took to bring us back together.”

 

“Yeah, funny,” Erik agreed, but didn’t sound like he meant it.

 

Anna wasn’t saying anything, just watching, eyes curious. Charles turned away, “Let’s go home.”

 


End file.
